


A Colored Atlas

by yuletide_archivist



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-19
Updated: 2003-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:21:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now she might be sleeping with Catherine to get assigned better cases, to get back at Grissom, to get close to someone, to get laid.  Sara's never had this much sex in her life and the reasons, really, don't seem that important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Colored Atlas

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Mlle Elizabeth

 

 

This is the light in Sara's eyes: one arm bent above her head, the other across her stomach, Catherine between her open legs. She's violent, her lotioned fingers cupping Sara's knees and digging red and purple into her skin, her teeth rough like pearls along Sara's sex. Cat growls in her impatient way, making Sara's neck arch back like she's covered with rising steam. Sara slides her hands, left on her breast, right tangled in her damp dark hair as Catherine's tongue pushes deep inside her. 

Looking down she sees beauty, Catherine's long vanilla back broken up by the black and tan lines of her ruffled bra, her bare hips perfect and narrow. Her nails dig now into Sara's thighs, pressure like needles. In this room are pictures of Sara's mother, her closest cousin on the night of high school graduation, her dead grandfather. In Catherine's purse are ten school photos of her daughter. Sara braces her body against Catherine's mouth, her naked feet fluttering on the dirty sheets. Cat moves her body like she's dancing, and Sara closes her eyes. 

In the darkness of her own mind she sees a pink parted mouth, yellow-red hair flirting with collarbones, translucent skin. She has stood over dismembered bodies, brutalized children, bombed-out homes, but this is what feels profane to her. 

* 

Her work days are by turns dull and sensational. She doesn't try anymore to pretend that doing Catherine's grunt work is rewarding, that standing to the side of the press-conference microphone will fulfill her. But she doesn't know what will. 

Sometimes when she's walking into the garage to rip a car apart, Warrick will open the door for her and usher her through with his fingertips skimming the small of her back. Sara feels that in the hardening of her nipples against her blouse, the warm rush of an automatic response. 

Sometimes, too, she stands over a microscope and sneaks a look at Catherine, doing the same. Cat might blink or swallow, but she will always take hold of Sara's wrist with her fingers, guiding her, saying, "Look at this." That, Sara feels like a knot in her belly, a seed of fury and desire. She wanted something a little bit like this and now she can't make sense of it at all. 

* 

Once, as they were processing an elderly woman's room in a nursing home five miles off the Strip, Nick touched her arm and said that only lonely people die alone. He said it with such passion in his voice that Sara was unnerved, feeling for a moment like he could read her mind. And so she shook him off, replied, "Everyone dies alone, Nicky. Some people just have a bigger audience than others, that's all," and tried not to vomit from the ammonia and urine stench in the walls. 

At first she slept with Catherine because she didn't have anything else to do. It wasn't even good the first time, Cat with her too-small nipples and too-long fingernails. "I've done this before," she'd said, like an afterthought, and Sara'd thought, "You've never done this with me." 

Now she might be sleeping with Catherine to get assigned better cases, to get back at Grissom, to get close to someone, to get laid. Sara's never had this much sex in her life and the reasons, really, don't seem that important. 

* 

They have coffee together on a Sunday morning like they're actually a couple, and Sara even fixes toast when Catherine wrinkles her nose at the mention of cold Chinese. They pass pages of the Sun between them and Sara reads, after Catherine's finished, a small article in the Accents section about Sheriff Mobley. 

She reaches across the table for the remains of Catherine's breakfast and lets the underside of her breast brush across her forearm. She's thinking of dipping her fingers into the side of Cat's thin, white panties and then Catherine opens her mouth. 

"I slept with Grissom," she says, and Sara isn't surprised at all. 

She says they've been fucking off and on for years but not for a few months, not since Catherine took up with Sara. It doesn't feel a thing like the consolation it's supposed to be. She feels Catherine's words in the base of her spine, a pain that makes her eyes smart with tears. And she can see, reflected back at her from across this terrible messy table, that Catherine knows the tears aren't for her. 

Catherine stretches until her thumbs are brushing under Sara's eyes, the same way she'd comfort a child. She leaves without argument when Sara asks her to, which she did because there was nothing else to say. 

* 

At a backyard-turned-crime scene, Catherine shows up with Warrick and looks around. Sara's been here with Grissom for twenty minutes, standing back against the side of the house. Catherine looks at them both, her kit weighing her down, making her stand lopsided. She pauses, but just barely, and Sara watches from behind her sunglasses as Catherine takes two steps forward and stands next to Grissom. She isn't trying to be obvious but it seems to Sara that she's making a choice. 

An hour ago there was a party here. A banner that reads 'Happy Birthday, Thomas' in blue block letters is still hanging on the fence. Fretful parents are arriving in twos and threes, scooping their children up in a flurry of kisses and tears. Thomas' mother waits near the garage, her face a colorless mask as the mother of an unlucky child - the one dragged out of the swimming pool, the reason Sara's here - struggles in her husband's arms. 

"Why my daughter?" she asks brokenly, keening, and Sara feels like a failure because she doesn't have the answer. 

Three days ago Sara got a phone call that woke her from a thick sleep. She let the phone ring and turned away from it to rest her head next to Catherine's, on the same pillow. Sara hears whispering and turns and sees Catherine's head tilted into the curve of Grissom's neck, her mouth close to his ear. Whatever Catherine's saying, Grissom nods. 

* 

Sara's eating alone in a restaurant, after shift, when she sees Hank. A piece of egg the size of a penny falls off the end of her fork and into her lap when he sits down. She isn't sure if he saw, so she leaves it there. 

It's awkward, but only just and only for a little while. He laughs when she asks about Tahiti, and says that Elaine left him and took one of her girlfriends in his place. He asks, too, if she's seeing anyone. He sounds hopeful, but also desperate. Sara thinks that just might be the perfect mix. She folds her hands on top of the table and tries to picture Grissom and Catherine in bed and says no, she's not seeing anyone at all. 

* 

A week passes before she touches Catherine again. She spends too many days convinced that she's pregnant. Her stomach flutters with hunger and she knows it's the child she made with Hank; her child, their child. But she's not pregnant, of course, and for a scientist she realizes she should know better. 

She remembers Catherine's schedule, knows that Lindsey leaves for school at this time in the morning and gets home at that time in the afternoon. She presses her hands against Catherine's stomach when the door opens, presses and pushes until Catherine's pinned beneath her, against the wall. She thinks about power lines weighted down by snow, images she's seen in books and magazines. This is how she feels. There is no real resolution. 

There's water in the tub, scented like rose with a layer of bubbles on top. Catherine has taken Sara's hand and led her into the bathroom, and it looks like dessert. She slides in with half her clothes on and her fingers slip into Catherine like a dream. This is the light in Sara's eyes. 

*  
End. 

 


End file.
